Manchester United need to do something about manager Erik ten Hag, according to former Arsenal star and pundit Paul Merson.
The Red Devils have lost two home games in a row by a 3-0 score-line, suffering humiliation at the hands of their rivals Manchester City in the Manchester Derby at the weekend before being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Newcastle United last night.
Ten Hag did some decent work in difficult circumstances last season, winning a trophy with Man Utd and getting them back into the Champions League, but this campaign has started terribly, and it’s hard to imagine the Dutch tactician will get much longer to turn things around.
Merson believes it may already be time for the club board to have important conversations and come to a decision, with the pundit clearly not sounding optimistic about Ten Hag’s ability to lift the team out of this negative spiral.
“The face I see every week is Ten Hag chewing gum, stone-faced. It’s all I see and something has got to be done,” Merson said on Sky Sports, as quoted by the Metro.
“It’s now a big game on Saturday away to Fulham. I don’t see how much further this goes on. I know I read in the papers it could cost £15m. I know they may say that’s a lot but they’ve just let £80m go to waste in not playing Jadon Sancho.
“They chased this kid for I don’t know how long, he says one thing, and now he’s completely out. He’ll probably go out on loan in January and they’ll be paying half his wages.
“This needs to get sorted and personally I think it’s toxic. I don’t take any notice of it being toxic behind the scenes. I am more worried on the pitch which is where it counts. They are all over the place and if not for a last-minute penalty they would have drawn at home to Copenhagen. Come on, get serious.
“For me, he is under serious pressure and they have got to have a meeting and see what they do. He has lost the players, you don’t start getting beat the way they are getting beat.
“Everybody loses football matches but there are ways of losing and tonight, like last week, they were just completely beaten. It is not good at all. Everything was too easy for Newcastle.”